End of support for Notes/Domino R5

September 30 2005


As other bloggers have noted, today is the official end of support for Notes/Domino R5.  Extended support contracts are available for up to two more years, but for the most part, this marks the end of the release cycle.

It feels like I should give a eulogy.

I changed my whole life for Notes R5 -- moving to Boston to be a Notes product manager for this release.  My first assignment was to work with Binary Tree on e-mail migraton tools, then I moved on to working on the Welcome Page with this guy, and some deal-making with AOL and Lycos.  Somehow I let Scott Prather convince me that the commute from Boston's Fenway neighborhood to Westford wouldn't be bad.

It seems most remember the R5/I am Superman ad campaign, along with Super.Human.Software as a tagline.  I don't think I'm allowed to publicly say how many zeros were in the launch budget -- wow was that a different time and place.  I think we celebrated the R5 launch for about six months, starting with Lotusphere 99 ("shipping product?  Who needs shipping product?") all the way through ship parties and champagne lunches and heaven knows what else.

R5 was a great product.  I remember how the new UI was very fluid...development was trying to move forward into the Internet UI era while managing performance, backward compatibility, and feature requests coming in until the last day.  And the challenges of getting the client templates built when they were so reliant on the new features in the R5 Designer. 		Image:End of support for Notes/Domino R5


With all the discussion we have about the Notes UI, one bit of trivia I'll (over)share is about the R5 logo.  The swooping "N" shape and lowercase "notes" that you see above were marketing creations.  We went through a lot of different designs for those, as well as for things like the icons for the welcome page.  Robby Shaver did his own somewhat obscure but creative work on the "window panes" that were in the lower left of the R5 calendar (you did understand that metaphor, right?).

R5 was a massive undertaking, with years of work, tons of sweat, and a really incredible product management team to work with.  That was a special time at Lotus, and I'm grateful to have been a part of it.

What's your favorite R5 memory?  Cliff, it's OK, we won't beat you up if you participate in this discussion. ;)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [28]

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  1. 1  Axel Nastansky http://www.pavone.com | 9/30/2005 4:05:09 PM

    My favorite memory is how my colleague Alex and I convinced our managers that it was more cost-effective to send us to Lotusphere Berlin rather than Orlando that year. We looked at what our colleagues had spent on going to Orlando in years past and came up with a budget that was about $50 less. No one had to know that we were staying at a youth hostel to make up for the extra flight costs coming from Portland, Oregon. It was a fun subway ride from Kreuzberg and they had better Doner Kebab there, too. I'd post a fun R5 photo from Berlin but not sure how?

  1. 2  Pavel Shkolnikov  | 9/30/2005 4:13:37 PM

    Hey Ed,

    Love to see your blog. I remember those glorious days; I was a developer at Binary Tree at that time. This was cool - Lotus came to us, wanting to include the product we wrote into Notes; opportunity to work with developers from Iris; getting their daily build binaries and even finding a bug in Notes code! Working days and nights to make a deadline... What a time!

    Congrats on your current position at IBM. You blog is nice but I'd like to see more about IBM's wireless side of the story. I work for Research in Motion now, leading the Domino BES development team. Do you have BES/BlackBerry at work? What's the wireless strategy for Domino and Workplace?

    - Pavel

  1. 3  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/30/2005 4:25:48 PM

    @1 Axel send me mail with the pic, I'll post some next week

    @2 Pavel good to hear from you. Seems a little self-serving to ask about the wireless strategy, no? I see it now -- Pavels.blogspot.com. I'll link to you :) Seriously, the BES/Blackberry story for Domino is excellent, so kudos to you and the team. I'm looking forward to BES 4.1, with the IM integration and some of the apps support, sounds really good.

  1. 4  Pavel Shkolnikov  | 9/30/2005 4:39:16 PM

    Pavels.blogspot.com - no, no, not me. I don't have a blog yet, too lazy and busy.

    Regarding the wireless strategy - well, Microsoft now is getting into wireless email market, so I'm naturally interested in IBM's plans ;-)))

  1. 5  Egor Margineanu http://egmar.blogsome.com/ | 10/1/2005 3:37:19 AM

    Hi Ed.

    Lotus Notes 5 was my first experience and my first job. And I love it. I think Lotus Notes is the best ever software product.

  1. 6  Subhan http://slate.blogspirit.com | 10/1/2005 6:32:18 AM

    Yes, very similar feelings like Egor's

    R5 has served very well as a Business Platform, and inspite of criticism from competitors, like of this software has not yet been produced. I mean, where do you get such a Solid Infrastructure and Development environment in a unified way.

  1. 7  Ray Bilyk (aka The Lion King) http://www.thepridelands.com | 10/1/2005 8:52:56 AM

    My experience was from a different perspective. While R5 was launching software, we launched the Lotus R5 educational classes. We went hog-wild with Superman and the super.human.software also. Every student that took a class that year got their picture taken in front of a Superman with his head removed so they placed their heads in Superman's place. We had this HUGE wall with everyone's picture. Great classes, awesome students thirsty for knowledge, cool launch parties... those were good times...

    What made it great was that I made my first trip to Lotusphere! I remember the feeling that I made "it" when I went there. I was surrounded by people who had the same thoughts and feelings as me. I still have my "I AM" sign! I occasionally use it to inspire me.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Ed. How where's my Superman costume?

  1. 8  Colin Williams http://www.guttedgeek.com | 10/1/2005 3:30:48 PM

    My favorite memory is sitting down at a desktop Pentium II desktop (20GB hard drive/128MB ram) and installing Domino R5 on it. This was the first real mail server for the company and I remember thinking that this Domino thing was extremely mysterious. We ran 50 users on that little box for six months before deciding to invest in some real hardware for it.

    We're a tiny Notes shop in the scheme of things but 4 servers/400 users later, we love Notes. Sure, I can be negative about it sometimes but R5 completely captured my imagination and thankfully the company let me run with that. We're running dozens of custom Notes applications to solve various problems - quite simply, I don't see how we could live without it.

  1. 9  Bob Knieff  | 10/1/2005 8:48:02 PM

    R5 will always have warm memories for me becuase it was a great release for me and my career. During the summer of 1999 my co-worker, Dale Cybela and I had spent several weeks carefully planning our upgrade to 5. We had done similar planning for upgrades from 3 to 4 and from 4 to 4.6. We developed an extremely intricate 142 step procedure for upgrading our Hub server. One of the great things about Domino was, and is, the ability to upgrade in place. We were having performance problems on 4.6 and simply by upgrading the application server to 5 we radically improved response times for 800 applications! (Yes, that's 800 applications on one server). On one heavily used application the response time improved by 20-30 minutes per user per day - saving the company $340,000 in labor savings over a year on just this one key application! Based on transaction and read/write counts I estimated that upgrading this one server saved 844 hours per week in reduced response times. This release saved the day for Lotus at my former company (I came to Lotus/IBM in the fall of 2000).

    As a result fo this positive experience with performance and R5 I was asked by Carol Zimmet at Iris to speak at Lotusphere 2000. The session was titled "ID601: Deploying Domino R5 for Performance and Scalability -- The Sequel". The presentation is still available here { Link } . At the end of the presentation Carol awarded me with a Domino jacket for being one of the first in "Club 2000" for having 2000 concurrent users on a Domino server. I also received about 50 requests for our 142 step procedure.

    As someone who had done very little public speaking up to this point in my career, I was a bit nervous about speaking at Lotusphere - the coolest event around! When asked to present I figured I'd be in some smaller and un-intimidating room such as Southern Hemisphere II at the Dolphin or Pelican I at the Swan, but no - we were in Northern Hemisphere A - using the same elevated podium as the keynote speakers! If memory serves me, I was speaking from the same place that Walter Cronkite had spoken just two days before! A funny thing happened during that presentation -- I was sitting on one of the director chairs that were placed on the stage and when it was my turn to speak I got up from the chair to go to the podium and the battery pack that goes with the microphone somehow unclipped from my waistband and slide down the inside of my pants and stopped at about my knee! I'm sure folks in the audience wondered why I had such a funny look on my face - it was a very funny feeling and I was relieved that the mic didn't unplug from the battery pack.

    Presenting at Lotusphere was a great growing experience for me, in large part because Carol, Razeyah Stephen and Lori Fucarile treated my like royalty! I also got to go to the "way cool" Iris party at Lotusphere that year.

  1. 10  Rolf Kremer http://www.r-k.net | 10/2/2005 9:18:53 AM

    My first memory with R5 is that it was the first release with a Welcome Page which you saw after you started Notes. All colleagues (and me) asked: Where is my workspace? The first thing we searched was how we can activate the workspace... ;-)

    Unfortunately the new releases of our Lotus Notes based products should run with Notes 4.6 clients and we can't use the new R5 features in the development, so we couldn't work as a Superman... ;-)

  1. 11  Lars Berntrop  | 10/2/2005 8:27:20 PM

    My best memory of the I am Superman ad campaign was at the Dutch launch party. Somehow the movie projection glitched and part of the movie was in sepia. Man, that looked so much more powerful. I remember mentioning this, but I suppose it never took, as I never saw that ad in sepia again. Too bad, it looked absolutely beautiful.

  1. 12  Ethann Castell http://www.caliton.com | 10/2/2005 10:35:15 PM

    I have lots of good memories about Notes 5 and Lotusphere 99 when it was launched. A fellow BP called up 5 days before Lotusphere and said he had a spare ticket. It was a mad rush to organise flights etc but it was worth it. LS 99 was amazing, 10'000 plus people all running around frantically... good times. I also remember the amount of money that you could earn around that time as a Notes developer, the unending calls from recruitment agents, and the smooth upgrades from R4 to R5.

  1. 13  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 10/2/2005 10:54:44 PM

    Dear friends, we gather here today to wish a fond farewell to our close friend R5. With all the embedded code still laying around, the Welcome Page staring us in the eyes each morning, it is no surprise that R5 will not soon be forgotten.

    Coffee, tea and cookies will be served at Ed's blog.

    Someone please get a high chair for Hannover

  1. 14  Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 10/3/2005 7:16:02 AM

    Welcom Page? What's that - my ND7 still proudly displays Workspace... =)

    My R5 experience is minimal. My company officially decided in August 2002 to purchase Lotus Notes and Domino. We had the server installed by a 3rd party and then about 2-3 months later (when it went Gold) I loaded 6.0 over that R5 install and we haven't looked back.

    Speaking of Superman...don't laugh too hard!

    { Link }

  1. 15  Damien Katz http://damienkatz.net | 10/3/2005 11:20:46 AM

    R5 was the release I joined Iris for.

    My favorite memory was the usability testing of customizing the Welcome Page. I remember it did very well, all the users found it intuitive and easy. And one user kept trying different things even after he finished his task, seeming to get a kick out of playing with it. It took a lot of work to make it that simple. At the time I really pushed what was possible in building a pure Lotus Notes UI, I remember a lot of Notes people were surprised to learn it wasn't a native feature, that it was just another nsf file.

    Unfortunately, the pages themselves had some real usabilty problems that kept the welcome page from being more useful. I have to take the blame for that too I guess.

    Anyway, speaking of Robby Shaver (who was responsible for a lot of the Welcome Page design as well), he was one the guys who designed and implemented the first Properties Box at Lotus. And now MS has taken the concept and turned it into the "ribbon" (which looks way-cool BTW). Anyone know his email address?

  1. 16  Peter Ward www.faiconsulting.com | 10/3/2005 1:19:11 PM

    I remember walking through Time Square in NY on a cold winters night. In fact coming back from some dot com loft party and seeing the Super Human software posters up all over the place.

    Thinking, they'll on to a winner.....

    Was working for Unipower Systems an LP, now working for a Microsoft BP. ......Sharepoint, . net, Project Server.

  1. 17  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 10/3/2005 1:30:00 PM

    @16 I remember those R5 posters all over the world -- even places like Los Angeles, Sydney. Loved that.

  1. 18  Peter Ward www.faiconsulting.com | 10/3/2005 1:38:32 PM

    Can you buy these posters anywhere? They were great.

    Also the TV commericals - Are there any web sites shows these?

    This put Lotus on par with the Apple commercials..

  1. 19  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 10/3/2005 4:33:10 PM

    Working on the R5 launch team, I have quite a few memories. I will be posting my memories in the next couple of days with photos of many R5 launch related items to the blog. There are sure to be a couple of one off items that very few people have seen before...just need to get the camera out to take pictures...

  1. 20  Sean Harris  | 10/3/2005 7:35:01 PM

    Those were the days of deep pockets investors, dot com boom and hugh crowds in attendance. If I remember correctly I think LS sold out in 30 - 60 minutes that year

    Who remembers R5 Guy?

  1. 21  Bob Balaban  | 10/3/2005 7:43:11 PM

    I'm not sure if it was during the R5-Lotusphere or one of the 4.x-Lotuspheres, but I have a vivid (pleasant) memory of the following section of the opening session:

    Cliff Reeves is speaking about the new release, Michele Pennell is at one of the podiums. A tower PC rises from a trapdoor in the floor. Cliff takes a 2x4 and whacks it, upon which there are interesting fireworks, etc.

    Michele pretends to nibble on a pinkie nail, and states, "Well, I'm not flustered, because I'm clustered!"

    Cheers from the audience.... it was a classic moment.

  1. 22  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 10/3/2005 8:25:15 PM

    @20 - Sean, of course I remember the R5 Guy -- what I don't know is whether his efforts were successful. Curious.

  1. 23  David Price  | 10/4/2005 9:48:38 AM

    My company started with Notes 3.3, cc:mail and the LMEF. Had a good upgrade to 4.5 and was looking forward to almost every feature in R5. Domino 5 was also the cause of another worldwide rollout project which was great. Seeing how the technology literally tied together people from Singapore, Brazil, Europe, etc. was very satisfying.

  1. 24  Henry Bestritsky  | 10/4/2005 3:20:54 PM

    I heard Dennis Leary got fired from the campaign. Anybody remember why?

  1. 25  Bob Balaban  | 10/4/2005 4:39:15 PM

    Oh yeah. He said something nasty about the Pope on a TV comedy special. IBM cancelled his advertising contract.

  1. 26  James Grigsby  | 10/6/2005 7:53:00 AM

    One of my best memories was the night team hit 10,000 benchmark users during R5 development (Oct I believe). Tim Halvorsen and Steve Beckhardt came to lab and were psyched. A funny R5-LSphere memory was someone having difficult running 20 users on a server. After some white-boarding, we discovered individual was running 6 separate Domino partitions on a 128MB RAM Pentium/133. We told him to go to a single partition and all his problems were resolved.

  1. 27  David Schaffer bloginprogress.us | 10/6/2005 12:57:21 PM

    All this nostalgia for R5 just makes me feel old. To me "old" Notes is R3 on OS/2 Warp and I've still got an R4 server chugging along for serving up the odd web page and simple document database.

    R5 was a big step in getting us from there to here. End of support is certainly a milestone.

  1. 28  Goudhaa  | 10/19/2005 9:23:10 AM

    Curiously, my mail server is crashing every days now...Yes, IBM, I have understood that you have the possibility to impose your upgrade ! Be sure that I will remember this when the time will come for me to choose my new application server!!!